I would like to congratulate you on a very well thought out program. I am especially impressed by the correction algorithm, which in most cases is capable of eliminating clicks with a minimum of signal distortion despite the fact that it has only one adjustable parameter.

That brings me to my suggestion. I have just finished processing my first vinyl LP. In order to become familiar with the correction performance, I stepped through and inspected all 12000 corrections. I found that in almost every case (about 90% of the total), the correction was much more aggressive than it needed to be. In many of the stronger clicks, the over-correction produced an audible warbling of the music. By decreasing the correction widths manually, I was able to restore a good signal with minimal distortion and still eliminate the clicking sound completely. Maybe my tonearm/cartridge combination has an unusually tight impulse response, but roughly three quarters of my clicks (found with threshold setting 3) only needed a correction strength of 1 or 2 (out of the 76 possible settings!). Obviously an improvement in the automatic "fitting" of each correction would be welcome, but I know that is a difficult problem. How about another setting in the Auto-scan options that would bias the correction strength decision up or down? One end of the scale would be "tread lightly" and the other end would be "overkill" (the way it is now). I think that would have greatly reduced the need for manual tweaking in my case.

One more suggestion: it also would have been nice to have a third audition option that only leaves the currently selected click uncorrected. In other words, correct everything except the current click. In the totally uncorrected mode, sometimes it was difficult to distinguish the current click from others that were nearby. A quick fade-in at the beginning and fade-out at the end of the audition window would eliminate the distracting transient clicks as well.

jpr wrote:Obviously an improvement in the automatic "fitting" of each correction would be welcome, but I know that is a difficult problem. How about another setting in the Auto-scan options that would bias the correction strength decision up or down? One end of the scale would be "tread lightly" and the other end would be "overkill" (the way it is now). I think that would have greatly reduced the need for manual tweaking in my case.

Yes, that is a definite possibility. A number of users have reported the fact that corrections are usually wider than strictly necessary. As I'm sure you realise, it is very difficult to accurately predict the required width of a correction. The program uses a width near the 'worst case' end of the spectrum. This results in most corrections being too wide but in the vast majority of these cases, the extra width has a negligible effect on the audio. Therefore, I feel it is an acceptable compromise.

It would certainly be possible to include an extra control for the purists. You may not be aware that there is already a Correction - Shrink' command. This enables you to reduce the width of a correction with a single keystroke (Page Down). The technique for using this is to step through the large corrections (say magnitude 10 and above) using the Find (Next) command and shrinking any that are too wide. Generally speaking you can ignore the smaller magnitude corrections.

It may be that this technique at least as effective as an additional control would be.

jpr wrote:One more suggestion: it also would have been nice to have a third audition option that only leaves the currently selected click uncorrected. In other words, correct everything except the current click. In the totally uncorrected mode, sometimes it was difficult to distinguish the current click from others that were nearby. A quick fade-in at the beginning and fade-out at the end of the audition window would eliminate the distracting transient clicks as well.

Yes, another user also asked for this a while ago. At the time I didn't proceed with it because it is quite difficult to implement and I didn't want to overload the users with too many options.

Since that time, I have added the 'Stereo' commands on the Corrections menu and it occurs to me at you can use these commands to do what you want, albeit in a slight ly long-winded way.

The stereo left/right commands are provided to enable you to remove a correction from say the left channel, while leaving it on the right. However, you can also use the command to remove a correction from both channels (simply un-check both left and right') This will have the effect of temporarily removing the correction. Then after auditioning, you can re-check left and right to restore the correction.